In particular, Yzerman believes referees should use better judgment when calling penalties.

Yzerman made his opinion known after the Red Wings' overtime loss to the Oilers on Thursday. Although the Red Wings are 15-4-2 under the NHL's new rules, they're winless in their past three games.

A Mathieu Schneider holding penalty in the second period of Thursday night's loss irked Yzerman in particular.

"There are penalties all over," he told the newspaper. "I'll just use Mathieu Schneider's penalty as an example. He steps up and takes his guy out, and his stick gets caught and the crowd cheers so the referee puts his hand up. There has to be some discretion. The referees have to use some judgment on what is a penalty and what is not. They've taken judgment out of it and I think it's somewhat made it easy on the referees just to call anything, because there is no judgment.

"Good referees used to have good judgment. Now they've taken that out of the game. I'm not saying I'm blaming the referees for it, I just feel the whole thing has to be adjusted and they have to look at this seriously. They can't continue to call irrelevant things that have no business being called."

Yzerman, in his 22nd NHL season, has two goals and four assists for the Red Wings in 2005.